If you sign the petition the following letter is sent to the Presidential candidates:
Along with 85% of Americans, I believe that our country’s system for funding political campaigns must be fixed.The FightBigMoney petition website says that 218,831 people have signed the petition. I have signed the petition.
Please lay out a concrete, detailed plan to reduce the influence of billionaires and big money in politics. Your plan should include the core planks of the Fighting Big Money agenda, the best, nonpartisan package of principles and policies for reform.
About 20 organizations are identified as supporters, or partnering with Rootstrikers, and their identification on the website is copied and pasted below.
The petition, the identified organizations, and the people who have signed the petition, are a data point in all the social media related to the 2016 elections to date and all the social media that will happen before November 8th.
All the social media related to the 2016 elections ultimately seeks to affect the elections, including what the candidates campaign about, how the voters cast their votes on November 8th, and what ensues from the election results.
With that big picture of the social media in mind, the organizations behind the FightBigMoney petition should consider other social media activities that are seeking to influence the 2016 elections.
Consider, as an example, social media activities of MAYDAY in support of Jamie Raskin. In its October 27, 2015, blog post Kicking off 2016 with Jamie Raskin for Congress, MAYDAY says,
We also need 250 volunteers — including 40 in Maryland — to build a revolution that will carry us to victory.I do not know how many volunteers MAYDAY has gotten doing work, or what work they are doing, including social media work.
Regardless of that, consider that over 215,000 people have signed the FightBigMoney petition, and MAYDAY is seeking only 250 volunteers for its effort.
A fair conclusion from this is that MAYDAY believes that the benefit from a volunteer putting in significant time for MAYDAY is many times greater than the benefit achieved from a person signing an online petition such as the FightBigMoney petition.
I believe that to be true, and I think it is reasonable to think there is a rough correlation between the effort that is put in by a volunteer, and the benefit that is achieved in trying to influence the 2016 elections.
In other words, it does not take much effort to sign an online petition, and the benefit of a person signing the petition is roughly commensurate. Other volunteer effort that is greater will have a correspondingly greater benefit.
The #DeclareForDemocracy citizen effort seeks a couple hundred volunteer tweeters to spend an hour or two a week doing tweeting. This is a lot more effort by a volunteer than just signing a petition. I think such social media work is worthwhile and should be undertaken.
I am going to ask the below identified organizations behind the FightBigMoney petition what they think.
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